Tag Archives: Information

How Do You Find Your Sweet Spot? Seven Suggestions

Situation: A company’s sales are bumpy. The CEO thinks that this may be due to a mismatch between products that they offer and their customers’ needs. They currently use online surveys to capture customer needs and input. How do you determine customer needs? How do you find your sweet spot?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The most important first step for a smaller and growing company is to clearly identify the customer niche that they serve. This must be a niche where the company can out-serve their competition.
  • There are two types of niches to consider:
    • A product/service niche focused on a specific set of products and services – one where you can offer a differential advantage over your competition and become known for this, or
    • A customer niche – a specific set of customers that you dedicate yourself to serve in a way that provides a differential advantage.
  • An example of the product model is an individual who started an e-commerce site for lacrosse equipment – products not commonly stocked in sports stores. They offered a wide range of lacrosse products, built an online community, shared articles, etc. and became THE place for lacrosse players to get their equipment.
  • An example of the customer niche model is to focus on a population and build a concierge or member-only service. The niche here is the buying group. This can be employees of specific companies or government workers as examples. Costco grew using this model.
  • For an early-stage company, survival is about single pointed focus on that niche where you can provide better products/services or better serve your customers than anyone else. As you grow you can diversify based on the reputation and loyalty that you gained early on.
  • Look at competitors – how are they gathering customer preference information?
  • Look at your passion – is it products or people? Choose a niche that fits your passion.

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How Do You Optimize Your Business Model? Six Points

Situation:  A company is in the process of shifting their business model to better address customer needs. They have three different models under consideration. Management is split between these models, but must arrive at a consensus. How do you optimize your business model?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Right now, you are considering three different potential models:
    • Tools – your old model
    • Data – produced by your old model
    • Service – your new model
    • These are different models with different prospects.
  • The money makers in marketing focus on data, not tools. Data is information, and this is what is valuable to clients. If you want to focus on the data component of your offering.
  • Currently, you are scraping data from social media and matching this to your client’s database on a real-time basis. There’s a model and value here because you are enhancing your client’s current database by making it more useful and actionable to them.
  • You have tools to enable and add value to existing client databases by allowing them to better segment their database. Again, there is value here.
  • Your core IP is the ability to correlate diverse data sources. Have you protected this IP? If not, this needs to be a top priority.
  • How much information that you scrape from social media sources can you share without violating privacy? This is something to think about because people are becoming increasingly sensitive about companies collecting their private information.

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What are Your Obligations for Use of Data? Five Perspectives

Situation: A company wants to add additional apps to its current service. One possible source is a website that aggregates and publicizes relevant information. The CEO is concerned about whether these data can be used by the company and whether using these data will expose the company to legal action. What are your obligations for use of data?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Under fair use you can use data processed from other sources and resell this. The key term is “processed.” This means that you must add some of your own value to the data. You cannot just republish data through your site as though you had collected and analyzed it yourself.
  • You cannot copy and repost a copyrighted article. Text is copyrighted, but extracted facts are not. If you want to use text from a copyrighted source, you must get permission from the author or publisher. You can quote a source by providing appropriate references.
  • You can include a link to a relevant site without taking copyrighted information.
  • If the data that you wish to use from another site contains information that includes personally identifiable data – data that would allow a third party to identify personal information about an individual and misuse that personal data to the detriment of the individual – then a distinct set of regulations apply. If you even suspect that this could be the case, seek legal counsel on your obligations.
  • When you are using the Internet, your audience is international. The rules for use of data derived from other sources differ by country or region. Consult your lawyer for general guidelines that will allow you to use data from other sources.

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What’s the Best Way to Renegotiate a Lease? Four Strategies

Situation: A company in a competitive real estate market has about 50% more space than they need at $2.80/sq. ft. per month – full service. The lease is up in 5 months with an option to renew for 2 years on the same terms. The company wants to both reduce its space and to reduce the cost per sq. ft. by about 25%. What’s the best way to renegotiate a lease?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Gather information from multiple sources on current and forecasted cost of space in your market. Sources may include: other tenants, real estate agents, similar buildings, and walking the neighborhood to evaluate conditions. Look at newspaper ads and Craig’s List for both space & furniture.
  • Ask other tenants in your building whether have excess space that they would offer to you under favorable terms, or whether they are interested in your excess space. In either case ask for both price and terms.
  • Be careful with the information that you gain from real estate agents. They have more incentive to keep prices up than to find you the best deal. Balance their information with information that you gather from other sources.
  • Success in negation often is a matter of which side is best informed. Line up all of your options. Present these to your landlord and see if you can get what you need without having to move. For many landlords, a good tenant at a lower price is better than no tenant.

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Should You Put Privacy Statements on a Web Site? Five Thoughts

Situation: An early stage software-as-a-service (SAAS) company notes that a number of companies have privacy statements on their web sites. Is this something that is common, and should they consider their own privacy statement on their site?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If your services include the collection of users’ personally identifiable information many users will want to know that the information that they put on the site is secure. Get legal advice on the handling and storage of personally identifiable information. You may want to qualify for TRUSTe or a similar service.
  • Others will be competing in your space, or close to it. Look at these companies’ sites for what type of privacy statement they use.
  • Research how important this is to your target audience. Get assistance from someone who is good at drafting surveys. Hire a summer intern or local college student to conduct the survey. This is a quick way to answer your question.
  • Determine your business policy regarding privacy. If policy considerations dictate that you should have a statement, then find a model statement that you like and use this. Model a statement after one that appeals to you from another company. Make sure that you cover anything that you feel is important, and retain any prerogatives that you feel are important.
  • Create a link to a separate page that contains a model privacy statement. Count the number of clicks that it receives. You may find that nobody clicks on this.

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How Do You Focus on Execution and Delivery? Three Observations

Interview with Doug Merritt, President & CEO, Baynote

Situation: A company has a proven technology and satisfied customers. To achieve their goals, they need delivery on sales and service to ramp revenue. At the same time, new opportunities arise daily. How do you keep the team focused on execution and delivery?

Advice from Doug Merritt:

  • The first thing to focus on is focus itself. Most of us don’t suffer from lack of opportunities, but from an inability to make hard choices and diligently pursue the few critical or high pay-off options. To tell the difference between gold nuggets and distracting bright shiny objects, you must have a clear strategy and priorities on customers and channels you want to develop. It is critical to choose the right opportunities that will optimize achievement of the strategic plan and to say not to those that don’t. This must be constantly reaffirmed through a simple set of metrics around your optimal customer set, revenue ramp, and quality of services delivered.
  • The second thing is attracting the right talent. A small and rapidly growing company has little time and resources to effectively train fresh talent. If scale is the issue, it’s important to identify and attract experienced individuals – those who have proven their ability to deliver and who bring along a high quality, proven, loyal following. Top talent that can open the purse strings of your target customers. This means hiring rock stars who do this better than you can! The challenge for the CEO is remembering that success almost always comes from hiring people who can do their jobs much better than you ever could. The CEO’s unique talent isn’t being the smartest person in the room – it’s your ability to build and guide an organization that will achieve more than you can alone.
  • Third is to keep the team focused on the most important priorities. The CEO needs to generate a crisp vision and to distribute information that maintains focus on that vision. Most “Type A” overachievers want to do lots of things well. The key is doing the right things well. You do this by measuring, and by creating transparency around the few key levers that drive the strategy.  It helps your cause to say no to a visible and enticing “bright shiny object” that, in the past, the team would have reluctantly accepted.  Finally, it also helps to create a few large and non-negotiable milestones that get the company to focus, as a unit, on achievement.   Ultimately, the CEO needs to coach and guide their team to do the right things right.

You can contact Doug Merritt at [email protected]

Key Words: Delivery, Execution, Focus, Opportunity, Priorities, Customer, Channel, Plan, Metrics, Talent, Experience, Ego, Team, Vision, Information, Listen, Learn

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How Do You Fund Growth? Five Points of Focus

Interview with Hannah Kain, President & CEO, ALOM

Situation: While funding from banks and institutional sources has been challenging in recent years, growing companies need to fund their growth. How have you funded your company’s growth?

Advice from Hannah Kain:

  • We focus on frugality and prevent wWhile funding from banks and institutional sources has been challenging in recent years, growing companies need to fund their growth. How have you funded your company’s growthasteful spending. However we invest in tools that enable staff to purchase wisely and stay ahead of customer demands. We also collaborate with vendors to manage costs.
  • As a result, the last two years have not forced us to change how we fund growth. We are getting large contracts and work globally to solve customers’ logistics challenges. Our challenge has been moving from centralized distribution to strategically placed centers around the globe, increasing inventory costs and cash needs.
  • Where we have changed is in how we negotiate terms and credit with our customers. We manage vendor accounts payable to maximize cash flow while treating them as business partners. This requires close vendor communications to assure that everyone’s needs are met.
  • We have been cautious with our banks and seldom dip into credit lines. Managing vendor payments has been more effective.
  • Essential to vendor communications are open sharing of information and goal setting. We work to create a team atmosphere. This is similar to what we do in our offices. In our experience, instilling the right culture is far more powerful than financial incentives.
    • We share information through all-hands company meetings and regular updates so that everyone gets the full picture.
    • We also share information with our vendors so that each side is aware of the other’s needs.
    • We create an annual one-page business plan for the company, and parallel plans down to the supervisor level. Performance against plans is updated regularly to assure that we remain on top of situations.
  • We focus training on new tools. Our staff gets technology they need to be successful.
    • We generously provide technology to our employees, provided that they give a logical business rationale. This includes home computers, iPhones or Applets to help them do their jobs.
    • Similarly, when a vendor or customer asks for a service improvement or a new service with a good business rationale, we invest to support this.
  • These methods have allowed us to finance most of our growth internally.

You can contact Hannah Kain at [email protected]

Key Words: Funding, Bank, Institutional, Growth, Spending, Tools, Empower, Customer, Demand, Costs, Vendor, Cash, Needs, Terms, Credit, AP, Partner, Payment, Information, Sharing, Goal, Culture, Performance, Technology, Service

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